KonMari’d a kid

We’ve been rolling through our house like an unstoppable KonMari machine, and the most recent victim beneficiary was Mik’s bedroom. He wouldn’t have called it fun to spend three hours with his parents determining which of his possessions spark joy (answer: basically like four of them), but I know he is glad not to be starting his high-school years with a bedroom full of stuffed animals and crayons and seventy-three different sizes of clothes.

(For the record, joy-sparking possessions include T-shirts related to athletic achievements, a Pinewood Derby car shaped like a rubber chicken, a Portal blanket, and every scrap of paper that has anything to do with Science Bowl. We left him a bit more than that, obviously, but it’s nice to know what the essentials are.)

An unfortunate side effect of cleaning Mik’s room is that he wanted to throw out a big box of old stories and drawings, and I didn’t want him to, so now there’s a bunch of kid memorabilia sitting in a pile in my once-clean office INTERRUPTING THE FLOW OF MY PEACE. (This is what you get for not doing things in the proper order—am I right, people who have read this book??)

I’m starting to think it really will be possible to finish the whole house within six months, which is awesome considering that the KonMari promise is that once you experience that single moment of whole-house tidiness nirvana, you will never have to do this again.

All the happy buzzwords

The secret diet I’ve mentioned a few times has officially been released, so I can call it by its real name now: “AltShift” (by Jason Seib). M.H. and I have been following the AltShift rules for about three weeks, and so far I’m impressed—but not surprised because, as I mentioned, I have nothing but trust and respect for the author. (Still, I’m glad I volunteered to edit this for free because, for some reason I don’t quite understand, I would much rather provide $100 or so worth of pro bono editing work than shell out $25 for an ebook.)

Anyway, we’re AltShifting our little hearts out over here, and KonMari-ing them, too. Or at least a version of KonMari. She suggests that after tackling clothes, you next move on to books, but I don’t think M.H. and I are emotionally prepared for that. Instead, we’re getting rid of other stuff as fast as we can, and I just did a ruthless culling of the junk that was in my office and rearranged some furniture.

I guess it says something about the quality of this diet that both M.H. and I are losing inches AND experiencing a shocking degree of motivation for large projects.

The great closet KonMari-ing

It’s been pure bliss to have only a “normal” amount of work, and so, in my state of freedom, I immediately tackled my massive closet-cleaning project. To follow the KonMari method by the book, you’re supposed to take EVERY item in a category and put it in a huge pile somewhere. Ouch.

But the worst part is handling every single item and deciding what goes and what stays. I was fairly ruthless and ended up with five full garbage bags of clothes to donate. Ouch.

But then came the fun part! I gave some careful consideration to how I wanted to organize what was left and put it all back into my closet, making it as pretty as possible.

I transferred all my neatly folded socks and underwear to shoeboxes (shoeboxes being a KonMari-approved storage solution) and was able to leave my dresser completely empty. Here’s the after:

The pictures really don’t do it justice. My closet is an oasis of peace and pure, radiant joy.

GREAT resolutinos for September

I finished my all-consuming work project last night and now face that weird feeling of “what did I do with my life when I wasn’t working all the time?” Fortunately, it’s September 1, so that gives me an extra incentive to think through some ideas.

(I recently ran across the phrase “September is the new January” in terms of resolutions and fresh starts, and I realized that now, for me, every month is the new January!)

New month’s resolutions:

• Goal: Walk 75 miles. 
• Rule: Every day I am working, spend some of that time at the standing desk.
• Errand: KonMari the crap out of my clothes so I can stop being so jealous of M.H.’s closet. (I’ve been using “KonMari” as a verb lately; sorry.) My closet is large, so maybe I will be able to repurpose some or all of my dresser to store linens or something.
• Affirmation: This month’s affirmation brought to you by Google Image Search. See above.
• Theme: Thanksgiving! (Never too early.)

I did well on my August resolutions—five big checkmarks there—but of course they were mostly extremely easy things I was going to do anyway. And, by the way, I may just start spelling the word “resolutinos” since I seem incapable of typing it any other way, and “resolutinos” has a nice ring to it.

Couldn’t help it

I have been following the secret diet faithfully for eight days and, although I was planning to wait three weeks before doing this again, I wrapped the tape measure around my waist just now. The measurement is down more than 2 inches! Good gravy*!

That’s probably especially dramatic because of the 10 days in Maui that preceded the taking of the first measurement. But still.

* No actual gravy was consumed on the secret diet.

Tomato madness

Today’s distraction from the book I’m editing…

Tomatoes! (And blogging about tomatoes!)

When we got home from our trip, my fancy ananas noir was surrounded by weeds and totally falling over—the cage was sideways. There were bunches of green tomatoes, but they were mostly sitting in the dirt. (The whole thing had been knocked over in a windstorm earlier in the summer and, because I never check on it, I didn’t realize the degree to which everything was growing horizontally.)

As I weeded, though, I got a brainstorm:

I could use bungee cords to hold the cage up and provide vine support! It’s goofy, but at least now it looks like we are growing tomatoes intentionally instead of accidentally.

Also, there was one ripe tomato, which I was really excited to try. I set it down in the grass and then, no surprise whatsoever, in my bungee frenzy, stepped on it.

Tidying madness

I have a whole update on our Maui trip theoretically coming, but at the moment nothing is interesting me as much as…

Tidying!

I had put a library hold on “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” as I mentioned, and when we got back from our trip, it was available. I knew, million-page editing job or no million-page editing job, that I was going to be reading it immediately, so I didn’t even try to delude myself and just started taking little book breaks. After a day, I noticed that there was a second bookmark just behind mine, which meant—yay!—M.H. was also on board for tidypalooza.

Anyway, the book was utterly delightful—if you are the type of person to be amused by the writings of woman who has devoted her entire life to a mad obsession with tidying—and I believe what she says because there’s no way anyone else on earth could speak with such authority on the topic. Of course, I don’t really have time to start any major projects, but I couldn’t resist applying her method to my sock drawer.

Happy socks, arranged light to dark, and rolled, NOT BALLED.

I culled my sock inventory by about half, and there was so much extra room in the drawer that I decided to put my slippers in there to keep them company. I cheated, though, because only about six pairs of those socks really meet the “sparks joy” threshold. (They’re socks, after all.) Maybe the joy comes when you haven’t done laundry in a week and still have socks to wear.

M.H., on the other hand, is all in on tidying, and is starting right now. I’m going to be so jealous of his closet in about an hour.